As
@Lord-Marcus seems to have missed my valid question, I have thought it's high time for another conversion discussion! Today, it's a big candidate with all the recent releases Middle-Earth has received as part of the Rohan campaign, the Dunlendings:
These chaps are entirely Finecast/metal/Forge World, so going entirely by the GW route will be costly and yields very little poseability or uniqueness, but this subfaction is fortunately one of the easiest Middle-Earth ranges of them all to convert, given they're based on everyone's favourite longship-crewing raiders, the Vikings. Historical Vikings can easily be used to proxy Warriors and Huscarls - Gripping Beast's Viking Hirdmen are some affordable models that certainly look the part and come with plenty of Hand Weapon and Shield options, plus some double-handed Dane Axes to bring some muscle to the field:
The boxed set will give you 44 models, which may be too many if you're only looking to include one or two warbands in your army, but remember that these can be used to represent both Warriors and Huscarls (Huscarls can apparently use their weapons as both spears and two-handed weapons, so you could probably get away with modelling some of them with the spears in the kit to make up for the shortage of two-handed axes), meaning one box of these will get you a long way toward completing your force (and as an alternative individual sprues from the set are very cheap to buy). The set even contains some command figures which can be used to represent Dunlending Chieftains and Warriors with Banners:
Dunlending Warriors can also take bows, which aren't included in this set but Gripping Beast also sell metal hands holding bows to allow a converter to easily model some archers:
The Wildmen are a bit more difficult given they look scruffier and wield different weapons to the standard Viking Bondsman, but here North Star comes to our rescue with the Frostgrave Barbarians box:
This set contains 20 figures, with options enough to build potentially all of them with Hand Weapons and up to a maximum of 8 with 2-Handed Weapons, perfect raising for a warband or two of these savage maniacs in an Isengard force. In addition the models fit the part perfectly, with a range of scruffy bearded heads matching both the Gripping Beast Vikings and the GW models, and the fur clothing resembling the scraggy rags worn by the film Dunlendings. The icing on the cake is that Frostgrave and Oathmark models scale rather well with Gripping Beast models, so there won't be any mocking from your opponent at the sight of ordinary Dunlendings standing a head taller than their superiors.
Additionally unlike their real-world counterparts the Dunlendings are not afraid to ride horses - the best fit for Horsemen would be one or a box of Gripping Beast Goth Noble Cavalry sprues, with spare heads borrowed from the Hirdmen box to preserve the Viking theme:
Alternatively, Victrix make an all-in-1 Viking set that contains 60 armoured and unarmoured figures, with enough to make 24 Wildmen and 24 Warriors or Huscarls all at once, and 12 command figures that can be used to make Chieftains, banner bearers and additional Warriors/Huscarls:
This could definitely be a more affordable way of building up your army (if you're not into Horsemen), but a word of warning - Victrix models are closer to Warhammer models in scale, so if you don't want your Dunlendings to tower over even the Uruk-Hai, I would recommend the Gripping Beast/Frostgrave option.
Once your rank-and-file models have been bought and painted at a tremendous saving, the prospect of buying Thrydan from GW and the other named characters from Forge World doesn't look nearly so daunting.
(although I do not consider myself a die-hard LoTR fan 
). Your proposed method of greenstuffing garments and helm crests seems a bit time consuming to me. Though I am interested in the result of this operation. 
